


you were never broken by ordinary things

by SiderumInCaelo



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s02e12 Through the Valley of Shadows, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-17 05:34:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29095089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SiderumInCaelo/pseuds/SiderumInCaelo
Summary: After returning from Boreth, Pike finds Burnham to be an unexpected source of support.
Relationships: Michael Burnham & Christopher Pike
Comments: 10
Kudos: 26





	you were never broken by ordinary things

**Author's Note:**

> Title is taken from the song "You Were Right About Everything" by Erin McKeown.

“I’ve got the complete report on my and Spock’s mission to the Section 31 ship, sir,” Michael says as she enters Pike’s ready room, carrying a PADD.

“Thank you,” Pike says. “Just leave it on the desk.” He’s not sitting at his desk, but rather standing behind it, his back to her, looking out the window.

It’s only barely not a dismissal. Nevertheless, Michael doesn’t leave after putting the PADD down, and instead walks around the desk until she’s standing next to Pike.

“Was there something else, Commander?” he asks, glancing at her. Still not a dismissal, but his tone doesn’t make it sound like an invitation to continue, either. Michael presses on anyway.

“Are you all right?” she asks. “Tilly said you seemed sort of…” she hesitates, searching for the right word. “Subdued,” she settles on, “after returning from Boreth.”

“And she asked you to what, check up on me?” Pike says, his eyebrows lifting slightly.

“Something like that,” Michael admits, and Pike huffs out a light, barely-there snort of laughter. It encourages Michael enough for her to add, “She was worried about you.”

“Tilly worries about everyone.”

“It’s one of the things that makes her so endearing,” Michael agrees, smiling at the thought. “And it doesn’t mean she was wrong, in this instance.”

Pike doesn’t say anything in response, his gaze fixed on the stars outside.

“I spoke to Ash, too,” Michael continues, not without some hesitance – she knows Pike and Ash haven’t always seen eye to eye. But Pike doesn’t react to the name. “He said that taking the time crystal required a sacrifice.”

“It did,” Pike confirms, his voice barely more than a whisper.

Michael reaches up to put her hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she offers, inadequate though it is. “Do you want to tell me what it was?” she asks.

Pike barks out a mirthless laugh. “No. No, I really don’t.”

But Michael doesn’t move, and only a few seconds later Pike speaks again. “Have – have you ever realized how much you were counting on having a certain future only after you lost it?” he asks.

Michael’s hand slips from Pike’s shoulder as she remembers –

_Captain Georgiou crumpling to the floor of her ready room, and Michael knows that even if this works her Starfleet career is over –_

_the hull disappearing and Connor being sucked into space, Michael surviving only because she’d been put on the wrong side of the brig containment field –_

_Georgiou being impaled, blood spilling from her chest and the light vanishing from her eyes, and Michael will never be able to make up for her betrayal now, she can’t even bring Georgiou’s body back –_

“Yeah,” she chokes out, blinking rapidly.

“Sorry,” Pike says, turning to face her. “I should’ve realized that was a sensitive subject.”

Michael forces herself to shrug, take a breath in and out. “As my Captain, I’d say you have a right to discuss my mutiny.”

“Your –” Pike begins, sounding startled, then lets out a quiet “oh” of understanding. “I thought you’d have thought of – well. When the Klingons attacked your parents.”

It’s not a bad guess, now that Michael’s thinking about it. But that loss had been so overwhelming, and she so young, that she’d barely been able to deal with the present, let alone think about the future.

Pike evidently takes her silence as an indication to move back to marginally safer territory. “If I had concerns about your trustworthiness, I wouldn’t have waited until now to bring it up,” he states, turning to face Michael more directly. “I’m a Captain, as you pointed out, and I can’t condone mutiny, but the war with the Klingons, Captain Georgiou’s death – they weren’t your fault.”

They weren’t _directly_ her fault, Michael silently corrects. Georgiou had, thankfully, managed to stop her before she fired on the Klingons, and had known the risks in trying to capture T’Kuvma. But if Michael hadn’t been so caught up in her own past, so convinced that a preemptive strike was the only option, could she have found a better solution? Could Georgiou, if Michael hadn’t incapacitated her, forced her to be without a first officer?

Something of her thoughts must show on her face, because Pike speaks again. “You don’t look convinced.”

“Spock may have had a point, when he said I insist on taking responsibility for situations beyond my control,” Michael admits. She manages a self-deprecating grin for a fleeting instant, before it slips from her face. “I know the Klingons violated Federation space and fired first, that they were spoiling for a war. It’s just… I betrayed Captain Georgiou, and she died. The details seem irrelevant.”

Michael lets out a sigh. “The worst part is that I’ll never get to apologize properly to her. I’ll never be able to prove to her that I learned from my mistake. I’ll never know if we could’ve found our way back from what I did. She’ll never get to see me become Captain.” Her eyes burn suddenly, and she blinks to clear them.

“How did you keep going, after you lost that future?” Pike asks, and there’s an edge of desperation to his question that makes Michael think it’s related to whatever Pike did to get the time crystal.

“I didn’t, initially,” Michael confesses. “Being court-martialed, sentenced, sent to prison – none of that required any effort on my part, I just let it happen.” Even now, she doesn’t like thinking too closely about those days, when the guilt and grief had felt big enough to swallow her, and she had almost wanted it to.

“What changed?”

“I let people care about me,” Michael says, smiling to herself. “And I let myself care about them back. Tilly, Saru, Stamets. Detmer and Owosekun. Spock. The other universe’s Georgiou. Ash, despite everything.” She turns her head slightly to look at Pike. “You.”

She looks back towards the window. “They showed me that even though my future isn’t what I expected, isn’t what I would’ve chosen, it’s still worth having.

“I don’t know what happened on Boreth, so I don’t know if any of this helps,” Michael continues. “But I do know that you also have people who care about you. A whole ship full of them – two, if you count the _Enterprise_ – ready to help however we can. Myself very much included, sir,” she adds.

Pike doesn’t say anything, and when Michael’s gaze flickers over to him he’s standing still, eyes fixed straight ahead, except for the muscle in his jaw she can see twitching.

Before Michael can talk herself out of it, she darts forward to give Pike a hug. He’s rigid under her touch, and she’s about to pull away, apologize for overstepping, when she feels him relax, his hands coming to rest on her back.

“Whatever it was that happened,” she says over his shoulder, “you don’t have to face it alone.”

His arms tighten fractionally around her before letting go, which Michael takes as her cue to release him and step back. His eyes look ever so slightly on this side of shiny, and Michael decides the tactful thing is to turn away from him – which also gives her the chance to surreptitiously wipe at her own eyes.

When she turns back to him, Pike looks as composed as ever. “Thank you, Michael,” he says, “for your perspective.”

“Of course,” Michael says. “If there’s anything else I can do –” she tries to add, but Pike stops her by shaking his head.

“I’m all right now,” Pike says. “Promise,” he adds, with a small, but genuine, smile. “Good night, Commander.”

This time, Michael takes the implied dismissal for what it is. “Good night, Captain,” she returns, then leaves the room.


End file.
